June 2024 - 18

MANAGEMENT
KNOWLEDGE
IS THE NEW CURRENCY
" Rain Day, Train Day " at Meadows
Farms takes advantage of inclement
weather to drive knowledge. Photos
courtesy of John Kennedy.
T
he brain can turn to mush pretty
quickly over the summer, and
teachers want to avoid summer
learning loss by sending kids home
with reading assignments or offering
summer classes. According to a
Brookings Institution study, students
lose between 25% and 30% of their
learning over the summer.
There is much similarity in the
green industry - vendors come to the
garden center in February and March
and offer product knowledge training
for your staff to get them soaked with
education and stoked for the season.
It's usually just a day or two of what
amounts to a fire hose of facts -
that's it. A good soaking in the spring
that is expected to last the entire year.
Can you imagine doing that to a plant?
Let's water and fertilize our people
just like our plants this year!
IGCs Committed to
Consistent Training
Many IGCs commit to training and
development on a more consistent
basis. Meadows Farms, with several
locations in the Washington, D.C., area,
has a " Rain Day, Train Day " model, where
they take advantage of the weather to
drive knowledge. They recently did this
in the spring with the Proven Winners
Certified Garden Center Training
Program. Great job, Team MF!
(If you haven't gotten your team
plugged into the Proven Winners
certification for 2024, check it out at
provenwinners.com/professionals/
retailers/certification.)
Joey Bokor and his team at Kerby's
Nursery in Seffner, Florida, is another
great example. They have a daily team
huddle and a product knowledge
presentation once a week, where a
team member teaches about a product
or problem and offers the value or the
solution. From there, those notes are
then posted into The Garden Center
Group's GroupSpace platform to be
available for review - and building a
resource library for future learning (visit
yourgroupspace.com to learn more).
Reston Farm Garden Market,
in Reston, Virginia, has set up a
continuous learning platform where
team members are challenged to learn
and teach something new each day.
Employees can attend The Knowledge
College, fostering a culture of curiosity
and education, and earn points that
can be converted into gift cards or
additional money in their paychecks.
(Hey, sometimes it pays to learn!)
Forest Lake Greenhouses, in
Florence, South Carolina, is currently
building its Forest Lake Greenhouses
University (FLGU) inside their
GroupSpace, where associates that
" learn more, earn more " by also
assigning points (think CEUs) to their
learning effort and rewarding them
accordingly.
Both Reston Farm Garden Market
and Forest Lake Greenhouses' intranet
platform are filled with vendor
training, product knowledge, ACT
Cards (Top Five Things You Need to
Know About Each Position at the IGC)
and Gardening 101 videos, as well
18 | LAWN & GARDEN RETAILER | JUNE 2024
As we move into summer and
your team begins to lose the
" spring " in their step, now
is the best time to set up for
your fall success.
By John Kennedy
as internal tribal knowledge to build
the capacity and competency of their
stakeholders of the future.
Louisiana Nursery, in Baton Rouge,
Louisiana, has its three locations
compete by adding up the points
each team member earns attending
Louisiana Nursery and Landscape
Association certification programs,
participating in the 2024 Proven
Winners Certification program,
teaching a class, attending a seminar
or presenting a " Deep Dive " during
its Friday huddles. This not only helps
to increase their knowledge, but also
shares the knowledge with other team
members - " Each One, Reach One. "
Meadows Farms, Forest Lake
Greenhouses, Reston Farm Garden
Market and Louisiana Nursery each
play " The Great Game of Business "
through monthly mini-games.
Employees learn about the features and
benefits of the products they promote,
then track the sales improvement over
the month. This year, they will focus
on curiosity and knowledge as one
of their key performance indicators.
Louisiana Nursery has made it a
healthy competition between their
three locations.
Heinz Brothers Greenhouse in St.
Charles, Illinois, has taken its training
to a whole new level with " One Plant
a Day: 365 Days of Plants " videos
by Summer Rayne Oakes, and then
tying the product and plant training
programs to its marketing plan.
Each week, they focus their
attention on items that are marketed
http://www.yourgroupspace.com http://www.provenwinners.com/professionals/retailers/certification
June 2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of June 2024
